Who is still using a Windows Phone? Honest Question.

[anon(50597)]

I wonder...if Microsoft would have tried their hands at Android or an Android-like OS device (even though we all think they never would), if that too would have been given up on?

It may have helped, but we’ll never know.

 

[fatclue_98]

I wonder...if Microsoft would have tried their hands at Android or an Android-like OS device (even though we all think they never would), if that too would have been given up on?

Why would they cannibalize their own profits? Remember, Microsoft makes money on every single Android device sold. They have zero incentive to produce their own Android handset but they're more than accommodating to sell Microsoft software for your Galaxy or Xperia.

 

[beman39]

I wonder...if Microsoft would have tried their hands at Android or an Android-like OS device (even though we all think they never would), if that too would have been given up on?

no no no no no no no no no... why? it would be another ADroid phone and gawd knows we don't need any more iterations of ADroid... what they should've done is "PROPERLY" worked on windows 7-8-10 and advertised and BACKED their WM OS like ADroid and IOS did! if they had any inclination of how to do that, then WM would be a different beast therefor different outcome of today! you want/like ADroid then go buy a plethora of ADroid devices... thanks but I like my WM phone just the way it is...except with more apps and back support and more joie de vivre!!!

 

[tgp]

Remember, Microsoft makes money on every single Android device sold.

Small technicality, but isn't it just Androids with SD cards? I believe Microsoft receives a royalty due to the FAT format, which isn't used in Android unless it takes an SD card.

Either way, Microsoft is making a killing for no more investment.

 

[nate0]

Hmmm. That is right. Still, was just wondering IF....

 

[fatclue_98]

Small technicality, but isn't it just Androids with SD cards? I believe Microsoft receives a royalty due to the FAT format, which isn't used in Android unless it takes an SD card.

Either way, Microsoft is making a killing for no more investment.

That's just one of them. There's over a dozen patents that they collect royalties for. Don't feel too bad for Nokia either, they get theirs too.

 

[tgp]

That's just one of them. There's over a dozen patents that they collect royalties for. Don't feel too bad for Nokia either, they get theirs too.

OK that makes sense. I'm not surprised. The FAT format was the one I had heard about. There are probably companies collecting royalties from many others for things we have no clue about, such as "rectangular shape with rounded corners" or something like that. :sweaty:

 

[RumoredNow]

Small technicality, but isn't it just Androids with SD cards? I believe Microsoft receives a royalty due to the FAT format, which isn't used in Android unless it takes an SD card.

Either way, Microsoft is making a killing for no more investment.

I think exFAT is the big royalty maker.

It's why cheaper devices may say they only support up to 32GB cards, because they don't want to pay for the exFAT licensing.

ProTip: Format cards @64GB and higher as NTFS which is royalty free and many OEMs throw it in.

Source: FAQ - GenBasic™ (scroll to bottom)

 

[tgp]

I think exFAT is the big royalty maker.

It's why cheaper devices may say they only support up to 32GB cards, because they don't want to pay for the exFAT licensing.

ProTip: Format cards @64GB and higher as NTFS which is royalty free and many OEMs throw it in.

Source: FAQ - GenBasic™ (scroll to bottom)

Thanks, I didn't know that.

 

[Drael646464]

My parents and I were using Lumia's until my dads fell in a pool and mums 920 started disintegrating, so they have now have Samsung S8's and a Lg G6. I am still using my 950xl.

Feedback from both have been the Android system is cumbersome to use and has too many sub menus and settings. The apps have too many adverts and their are too many homescreens (swipe left or right).

I needed to set these up for them and concur with what they have said, its such a cumbersome operating system. Will stick to my Lumia until key apps dont have support (Instagram) as I run a business on there.

Yeah, and every time they streamline something, they make something else more disjointed. It's a jumbled UI to deal with, and has loads of ads.

So I hope I can either keep running my WP, or buy another when it dies - ios does seem much more orderly but I have a sort of hatred of apple. Actually not too fond of google these days either, ad creep on the search, demonitisation and limited state on YouTube, the damore thing.....

 

[Drael646464]

what are you talking about, no replacement? 950xl can be found everywhere! ebay, swappa, craigslist, Kijiji, even here in the market place...

Actually its back in the Microsoft store. They are selling what appears to be new ones.

 

[mattiasnyc]

I'm still using my 950. I think I need a new battery, but other than that I still love it.

The user-interface is beautiful. The live tiles are great. Camera is great. I'll switch to another OS once either the phone dies or I have to use a software that isn't supported. But I won't switch until then.

 

[Joe920]

Still on my iPhone 6S plus, but I'm taking my 950XL with me on a trip today. It's just too convenient to dump hours worth of video onto the 64GB microSD. Getting ready for some mid-air binge watching!

 

[TLRtheory]

It is possible to move apps and data to the SD without root or needing an app on Android phones by activating "developer options"
Turning this on and scrolling to the bottom of dev options look for "Inactive apps" then enable "Force allow apps on external storage"
You will need to tap on any app under settings to actually move the app to SD so there is an extra step or two.

I do this with my Sony Xperia that has limited internal storage.
Works very well and hasn't caused any problems for me at all.

I can post details about how to do this if it will help.

So of course I had to put some serious time and research into this... and being that it's android, I wasn't surprised to find that it's not 100%... or even 60% for that matter.

Tried this on my Note 8 for about a month and noticed that not only was it very partial towards the apps it let me move over to SD, it... much like any other time, wasn't taking data entirely. Figured perhaps it would favor a phone that had limited storage, so I fired up my LG Stylo 2 Plus that had 16GB of storage instead of the 64GB my Note 8 has... and that's where things got deep.

Right off the bat, I found that there were a metric ton of non-system user installed apps I simply couldn't move to SD even after enabling the force to SD option from within Developer Options. Prism, Google Wallpapers, OneNote, Chase, Weather(3rd Party), Google Play Games (non-image), BlueMail, OneDrive, Ring, AZ Screen Recorder, US Bank, Adventure of Mana and quite a few more games absolutely refused to go... and of the games that said they'd go to SD, I noticed that moving them to SD didn't necessarily take their 500MB-2GB of data with them. Blitz Brigade; for example, reads that 0.97GB is being taken up on the external storage, yet there's still has a rather large 880.87MB data folder located under Android/data/com.gameloft.android.ANMP.gloftINHM on the phone storage... and the Stylo 2 Plus is within the same family of Nougat that my Verizon Note 8 is so it's not like it's been left behind or anything.

Though I do believe enabling developer options isn't asking too much of people, looking deeper into this really just reinforces my point about how painful something simple like trying to redirect installs is, and how incomplete it is even digging into deeper options baked within the OS. Having a very modest 29 user installs (7 were games), I still ended up at 1.06GB rather quickly... and just like I noted before... I'd still need root access, a ext partition and Link2SD in order to remedy this. Under the same restrictions (a Lumia 650 with 16GB of storage) I was able to install 150 apps, 106 of which were games that came with data files ranging between 400MB-2GB of data... the only apps that would not go to SD were Facebook, Messenger and Skype, and it still gives me over 10GB of on-device storage to play with.

I would say the Android counterpart is still nowhere near close to being as user friendly, efficient, effective and usable as the Windows Phone way of doing things. Even putting aside the significantly lower count of non-movable system apps, what's movable is greater in quantity, and actually takes the data with it... and I don't have to move them myself, I can just set it as the default destination.

 

[fatclue_98]

So of course I had to put some serious time and research into this... and being that it's android, I wasn't surprised to find that it's not 100%... or even 60% for that matter.

Tried this on my Note 8 for about a month and noticed that not only was it very partial towards the apps it let me move over to SD, it... much like any other time, wasn't taking data entirely. Figured perhaps it would favor a phone that had limited storage, so I fired up my LG Stylo 2 Plus that had 16GB of storage instead of the 64GB my Note 8 has... and that's where things got deep.

Right off the bat, I found that there were a metric ton of non-system user installed apps I simply couldn't move to SD even after enabling the force to SD option from within Developer Options. Prism, Google Wallpapers, OneNote, Chase, Weather(3rd Party), Google Play Games (non-image), BlueMail, OneDrive, Ring, AZ Screen Recorder, US Bank, Adventure of Mana and quite a few more games absolutely refused to go... and of the games that said they'd go to SD, I noticed that moving them to SD didn't necessarily take their 500MB-2GB of data with them. Blitz Brigade for example still has a rather large 880.87MB data folder located under Android/data/com.gameloft.android.ANMP.gloftINHM... and the Stylo 2 Plus is within the same family of Nougat that my Verizon Note 8 is so it's not like it's been left behind or anything.

Though I do believe enabling developer options isn't asking too much of people, looking deeper into this really just reinforces my point about how painful something simple like trying to redirect installs is, and how incomplete it is even digging into deeper options baked within the OS. Having a very modest 29 user installs (7 were games), I still ended up at 1.06GB rather quickly... and just like I noted before... I'd still need root access, a ext partition and Link2SD in order to remedy this. Under the same restrictions (a Lumia 650 with 16GB of storage) I was able to install 150 apps, 106 of which were games that came with data files ranging between 400MB-2GB of data... the only apps that would not go to SD were Facebook, Messenger and Skype, and it still gives me over 10GB of on-device storage to play with.

I would say the Android counterpart is still nowhere near close to being as user friendly, efficient, effective and usable as the Windows Phone way of doing things. Even putting aside the significantly lower count of non-movable system apps, what's movable is greater in quantity, and actually takes the data with it... and I don't have to move them myself, I can just set it as the default destination.

LG and Samsung are probably skinned heavier than any other OEM. It's quite possible that Sony, Moto and of course Pixel phones have that functionality. It wouldn't be surprising if that were the case since fragmentation has been a hallmark of Android since the beginning. There are a few features here and there that Sony offers that you can't get on a Samsung (without root anyway).

Sent from my Acer Liquid Jade Primo on mTalk

 

[Grey Vee]

Jump to android already

 

[Jcmg62]

I switched to Android back in December....wish I hadn't and still pull my 950 out at least once a week.

Cannot wait for a Microsoft mobile solution to arrive

 

[nate0]

Ya Microsoft. Hurry up already so we can help save ourselves from this corrupt Android revolution

 

[SA31]

I've spent the last week on my 950xl. I just can't stay away.

 

[73blazer]

I'm own a small IT consulting business. I completely rely on my Elite X3. I havn't carried my laptop for at least a year. I have a deskdock I leave hooked up at two different customers, I walk in, drop it in my desk dock, boom, full screen experience. Most of the time I start a VPN to my office and remote desktop to my office systems/pc's to get at my visual studio and also from there I can connect specialized VPN's to all my customers, develop, connect to unix machines I admin...etc...etc as well as connect to anything on that customers network where the desk dock is.
I LOVE walking in without a stupid laptop bag and a myriad of cables and BS, and using a real keyboard with a real monitor, drop it in the desk dock, boom, full PC like experience.
I do carry the HP lapdock but mostly it's left in my car for whenever I need to do something while not in the office and the phone screen just doesn't cut it.
I fully bought into the continuum experience and I still LOVE it today. As long as it keeps working, i'm not moving. I haven't even turned on my old laptop in months, and the last time I did was just to make sure it worked, run updates on it, ensure my customers VPN's still connected on it...etc.